Content within context
Friday 11 April 2025
Why integrate?
In the last curriculum, many of us taught the biological, cognitive, and sociocultural approaches as stand-alone units. To cut down on content, we chose content from the options to support them. In the new curriculum, it is best to teach the approaches within the contexts. This is not mandated, but given that the approaches have to be applied to psychological knowledge, and the knowledge needed for the course is contained in the contexts, this applied psychology works well. It reduces the content and frees up more time for inquiry-based activities.
- Identify the psychological terms and learning objectives for each approach. This task has been done for you on InThinking. See links for the biological, cognitive and sociocultural approaches already mapped onto the contexts. You can also see them on pages 24-26 of the Psychology guide.
What you will find
Learning and cognition are almost wholly the cognitive approach, and the human relationships context comprises the sociocultural approach. Given the nature of these contexts, this is quite logical, making the mapping very easy. Below is an example of how you might want to integrate the three approaches into the mental health disorders unit of health and well-being. This is a context to which all of the approaches are relevant.
Content in context
The health and well-being context is one where all three approaches can be integrated into learning.
Unit 1: Mental health disorders
| Area of study | Learning objective - an understanding of | Approach | Example |
Biological explanations | One or more biological explanations of one mental health disorder (You do not have to teach both genetic inheritance and and chemical messengers here.) | Biological: Chemical messengers – the role of one or more chemical messengers in human behaviour. Genetic inheritance – the extent to which human behaviour may be inherited. (You may choose one or more of these). Diathesis-stress model - the interaction of environment and genetics in human behaviour. | A mental health disorder and the role of dopamine and serotonin and noradrenaline, or other neurotransmitters. The use of twin studies to try and measure the extent to which a mental health disorder may be inherited. Genetic vulnerability and environmental triggers in mental health disorders. |
Cognitive models | The value of cognitive models in understanding a mental health disorder. | Cognitive: Cognitive models - the role of one or more cognitive models in understanding a cognitive process or behaviours. | Beck’s cognitive model explaining depression or anxiety. |
Cultural differences | Factors that may explain the difference in prevalence rates for mental health disorders between cultures and/or populations. Examples of cultural differences in approaches to mental health. | Sociocultural: Acculturation models - the application of one or more acculturation models to explain the experience of immigrants, refugees or other people taking an extended stay in another culture. Sociocultural: Cultural dimensions - the role of one or more cultural dimensions in understanding cross-cultural similarities and differences in behaviour | Acculturative stress in immigrants who have not been able to integrate but feel separated or marginalized can be related to depression and/or anxiety. Some may already have PTSD. Globalization has been linked to eating disorders. Cultural dimensions and different presentation of symptoms and rates of treatment compliance. |
In the classroom
You will probably prefer to integrate the content into the first context yourself. However, there is no reason why you couldn’t get students involved in the ‘mixing and matching’ of relevant content in subsequent units. If you give them the areas of study and the learning objectives for a context or one unit within a context, then group or class discussion could be used to decide the best approach for each. They should also be able to develop real-life, relevant examples.
My analogy when comparing the past curriculum with this one is that of a jigsaw: the previous curriculum was a mixture of the core approaches and studies in the center. We then tried to fit these to the ‘frame’ (edge pieces) of two options for HL and just one for SL. With this curriculum, we are first building the frame of four contexts and building inwards from them. Because there are many fewer learning objectives, the picture has less tendency to creep ever outwards and become too large to manage.
Upcoming post
The next blog post will be ideas for choosing the question for the IA research proposal. The proposal should be for research into a “population of interest” using one of the four research methods used in the class practicals. The research will not be carried out, but the IA research proposal should be written according to ethical guidelines and show methodological rigor. This post will help you guide your students in the process.